The Alba Madonna
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
Sizes
About this painting
The Child is taking hold of a cross. His mother and the infant Baptist watch him do it, and none of the three looks surprised — the Galleria Borghese, cataloguing a period copy, calls that grasp a clear reference to the destiny of the Passion.
She is not enthroned. The Gallery's own curator puts it flatly: not the queen of heaven, but a humble woman sitting on the ground. She wears the robes of a Roman matron; her sandal is copied from the Apollo Belvedere.
The Gallery reads the dandelions around her as the Passion's bitterness. She sits in it.
Sources: date, medium, accession 1937.1.24, and the curator's reading: not the queen of heaven but a humble woman sitting on the ground · the Child's grasp of the cross as a reference to the destiny of the Passion — catalogued on the period copy · the robes of a Roman matron and the sandal taken from the Apollo Belvedere · Carol Plazzotta and Tom Henry, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, vol. 4: Raphael (London: The National Gallery, 2022), which names no patron; the NGA record names none either · National Gallery of Art, Washington, collection highlight: Raphael, 'The Alba Madonna'.
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 12,090 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.